[Editor's comments: This is rough sledding, and I'm not a rough sledder. Thus my remarks aren't entirely to the point. However, . . . Noesis 76 - December 1992
I don't think the universe is inherently self-consistent. Islands of self-consistency exist, but are the result of vast and complex processes. Such islands are bordered in time and space by partial inconsistency. I think Grand Unified Theories are unrealistic; they expect information and consistency to persist under the most dire circumstances. What's needed is a flex theory which lets the universe cravenly wiggle away from singular conditions. Nature hates easily-specified states-they contain little information.
Low-information states tend to lack variety-they're all the same. And since they're all the same, they occupy little space in the sample space of all possible suites; they're unlikely. It would be easy for a universe to explode outwards from an initial big bang singularity. What's driving it outwards is the huge number of non-singular states. The informationless early universe can expand anywhere, and it does.
However, the same richness of possibilities that drives the universe away from singularity makes it ultimately improbable for the universe to have been at singularity in the first place. Singularity is tossing a knitting needle and having it land balanced on its point. Such a state occupies almost none of the sample space for a tossed needle.
With regard to a unifying metaphysics--I agree there is at most one such system. However, I think saying that there is even one might be optimistic. Secondly, such a metaphysics should be sufficiently powerful to appear in a variety of guises. Feynman (the Mega Society's absent prophet) wrote of the various curves the future rate of scientific discovery might take. I think unifying metaphysics will never be complete or finitely expressible.]
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